1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates to telecommunication systems and, more particularly, to a self-engineering telecommunications network which includes an operation and maintenance control point.
2. Description of Related Art
Existing telecommunications networks interface with a Network Management System (NMS) which oversees the operation and maintenance of the network. The NMS communicates with different network elements (NEs) in the network. The NEs send reports to the NMS indicating the performance of the reporting NE. When a fault occurs in a NE, the NE sends an alarm and the fault symptoms to the NMS. However, the reported symptoms are often not enough to enable efficient management of the network. In addition, the NMS is centralized with many NEs reporting to the NMS. The processing load is too great for the NMS to efficiently analyze the reported symptoms and determine the root causes of the problems.
There are no known prior art teachings of a solution to the aforementioned deficiency and shortcoming such as that disclosed herein. It would be advantageous to have an operation and maintenance control point which operates at an intermediate level in the network between the NEs and the NMS. Such a device would reduce the processing load on the NMS and rather than reporting symptoms, would provide the NMS with suggested corrective actions to correct reported problems. By automatically interfacing with the NMS, which analyzes and executes the suggested corrective actions, the operation and maintenance control point would create a self-engineering telecomnnunications network.